America's consumers are still pinching their pennies in today's rebounding economy. Although spending has increased, many are still afraid of what is around the corner in such uncertain times. Regardless of where the blame is laid, the lack of spending has had a trickle down effect. Most companies are down sizing or closing, whole product lines are being discontinued; more people become unemployed and less people spend. Many companies are dumbfounded and are trying anything new to increase their profit share. Where most have tried, many have failed. The Carolina Group, ...

Phuket will no longer be just a beach destination for overseas tourists. Central Retail Corporation has just announced plans to open a US$332 million entertainment, shopping and convention centre on the popular Thai island. After accommodation (30%), shopping now accounts for 24% of all tourists' spending in Phuket, with the typical tourist spending US$108 per day. To many developers it therefore makes sense to modernise Phuket into more than just a sunny beach escape but into one that can satiate the growing demand for all-round holiday resort destinations. Tourist ...

The hiss of air escaping from a leaky car tire is no one's favorite sound. Even less pleasant? Hearing that hiss of escaping air 250 miles above Earth's surface while inside the pressurized confines of the International Space Station. According to Eric Madaras, an aerospace technologist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., if an air leak were to occur aboard the station, alarms would sound, and the astronauts would locate and correct the problem according to procedures. But with only the crew's eyes and ears to go on, pinpointing the source of a leak ...

The agreement will see two of the most influential global voices in management education working closely with the GRLI, a network of forward thinking companies and business schools, to focus on an important message: that business and business schools need to work collectively to devote greater attention to developing responsible companies and leaders in the future. Mark Drewell, CEO of the GRLI said, "Over the past nine years we have learnt a great deal about catalysing change in the complex interface between management education, business and society. This move ...

When you think of knee replacement surgery, you generally envision an older adult with painful arthritis. But the procedure is also used for younger patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) whose joints have been severely damaged by the disease. Because the surgery in younger patients is relatively rare, little data exist on the longevity of knee replacements in JIA patients. An international, multi-center study led by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) has found that total knee replacements in younger patients with juvenile arthritis last at ...

Doses of medicine 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair prevent the tissue damage associated with atherosclerosis and other chronic diseases in mice. As part of a National Institutes of Health-sponsored project led by Zahi Fayad, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, researchers found that these nanomedicines are able to home specifically to damaged tissue to repair it. This study was published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Inflammation is the body's natural defense mechanism against invading organisms ...

For the first time, a study has compared water quality trends in forested streams across the country that are largely undisturbed by land use or land cover changes. The study, which draws on decades' worth of data from reference streams in six U.S. states and Puerto Rico, underscores the value of long-term data in understanding the patterns and causes of water quality changes in streams and rivers. It is published in the current issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters. "Much of what we know about changes in stream water quality comes from studies where ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, March 20, 2013 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, in collaboration with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., have developed a promising drug candidate to treat psoriasis. The finding was reported in a new paper published in Chemistry and Biology. Psoriasis is a chronic, non-contagious disease characterized by inflamed lesions covered with silvery-white scabs of dead skin. An auto-immune disease, psoriasis affects at least four million Americans. It is caused by the disturbance in the natural balance between pro-inflammatory signals ...

It's March 2013 – 50 years after Betty Friedan's explosive book launched feminism's "second wave," 41 after Title IX, the equal-opportunity amendment banning sex discrimination in education, was signed into law – and some exceptionally successful women are making a lot of news. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is riding high in public opinion, winning straw polls for the 2016 presidency. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, after shrugging off maternity leave, has sparked the "Great Telecommuting Debate" with a company-wide ban on working from home. And Sheryl Sandberg, ...

Researchers have for the first time demonstrated that mechanical forces can control the depolymerization of actin, a critical protein that provides the major force-bearing structure in the cytoskeletons of cells. The research suggests that forces applied both externally and internally may play a much larger role than previously believed in regulating a range of processes inside cells. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM) force-clamp experiments, the research found that tensile force regulates the kinetics of actin dissociation by prolonging the lifetimes of bonds at low ...

DALLAS (SMU) – The Innovation Gym in SMU's Lyle School of Engineering was buzzing and clanking on a recent morning as students tested robots they built for a specific task – collecting and remediating water samples, as Lyle faculty and students have been doing by hand in refugee camps in Africa and Bangladesh. The strong work dynamic that emerged among members of the first-year design class and their embrace of the inter-disciplinary team approach used to teach it has drawn the attention of the Center For Creative Leadership, which will send a team of researchers to ...

Cognitive problems with memory and behavior experienced by individuals with schizophrenia are linked with changes in brain activity; however, it is difficult to test whether these changes are the underlying cause or consequence of these symptoms. By altering the brain activity in mice to mimic the decrease in activity seen in patients with schizophrenia, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Neuron on March 20 reveal that these changes in regional brain activity cause similar cognitive problems in otherwise normal mice. This direct demonstration of the link between ...

Imagine having a daylong Thanksgiving feast every day for a month, then, only pauper's rations the rest of the year. University of Washington researchers have discovered Dolly Varden, a kind of trout, eating just that way in Alaska's Chignik Lake watershed. Organs such as the stomach and intestines in the Dolly Varden doubled to quadrupled in size when eggs from spawning sockeye salmon became available each August, the researchers found. They were like vacuums sucking up the eggs and nipping at the flesh of spawned-out salmon carcasses. Then, once the pulse of eggs ...

Supernovae are amongst the most violent events in nature. They mark the dazzling deaths of stars and can outshine the combined light of the billions of stars in their host galaxies. In 1999 the Lick Observatory in California reported the discovery of a new supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC 1637. It was spotted using a telescope that had been specially built to search for these rare, but important cosmic objects [1]. Follow-up observations were requested so that the discovery could be confirmed and studied further. This supernova was widely observed and was given the ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 20, 2013)—Estrogen therapy can help keep joint pain at bay after menopause for women who have had a hysterectomy. Joint pain was modestly, but significantly, lower in women who took estrogen alone than in women who took placebo in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial. The findings were published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. Studies looking at how estrogen affects joint pain in women after menopause have had mixed results. But this analysis of data on some 1,000 women who had hysterectomies—representative ...

Post-menopausal women, who often suffer from joint pain, could find some long-term relief by taking estrogen-only medication, according to a new study based on the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) that was released online today by the journal, Menopause. Previous studies of estrogen's influence on joint symptoms had produced mixed results, so researchers examined the findings of the WHI, the largest-ever study of the use of hormonal therapy in post-menopausal women. They examined the findings of the women enrolled in the Estrogen-Alone program, in which women who had undergone ...

Scientists have cracked a 35-year-old mystery about the workings of the natural motors that are serving as models for development of a futuristic genre of synthetic nanomotors that pump therapeutic DNA, RNA or drugs into individual diseased cells. Their report revealing the innermost mechanisms of these nanomotors in a bacteria-killing virus — and a new way to move DNA through cells — is being published online today in the journal ACS Nano. Peixuan Guo and colleagues explain that two motors have been found in nature: A linear motor and a rotating motor. Now they report ...

An innovative new process that releases the energy in coal without burning — while capturing carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas — has passed a milestone on the route to possible commercial use, scientists are reporting. Their study in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels describes results of a successful 200-hour test on a sub-pilot scale version of the technology using two inexpensive but highly polluting forms of coal. Liang-Shih Fan and colleagues explain that carbon capture and sequestration ranks high among the approaches for reducing coal-related emissions of the ...

The mystery of exactly how consumption of extra virgin olive oil helps reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) may lie in one component of olive oil that helps shuttle the abnormal AD proteins out of the brain, scientists are reporting in a new study. It appears in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Amal Kaddoumi and colleagues note that AD affects about 30 million people worldwide, but the prevalence is lower in Mediterranean countries. Scientists once attributed it to the high concentration of healthful monounsaturated fats in olive oil — consumed in large amounts ...

An international team of scientists led by Dr Kate Sanders from the University of Adelaide, and including Dr Mike Lee from the South Australian Museum, has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed 'shrunken heads' – or smaller physical features than their related species. Their research is published today in the journal Molecular Ecology (doi: 10.1111/mec.12291). A large head – "all the better to eat you with" - would seem to be indispensable to sea snakes, which typically have to swallow large spiny fish. However, there are some circumstances where it wouldn't ...

Hunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates. However, the hunting also has other negative consequences. The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates, and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest. This has been shown in new research from Lund University in Sweden. The destruction of the world's rainforests is generally recognised as a major problem. However, it is not only felling and clear-cutting that change the rainforest. A research ...

A new wonder material that can generate hydrogen, produce clean water and even create energy. Science fiction? Hardly, and there's more - It can also desalinate water, be used as flexible water filtration membranes, help recover energy from desalination waste brine, be made into flexible solar cells and can also double the lifespan of lithium ion batteries. With its superior bacteria-killing capabilities, it can also be used to develop a new type of antibacterial bandage. Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, led by Associate Professor Darren ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (March 20, 2013) -- University of Oregon chemists say that ultra-thin films of nickel and iron oxides made through a solution synthesis process are promising catalysts to combine with semiconductors to make devices that capture sunlight and convert water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Researchers in the Solar Materials and Electrochemistry Laboratory of Shannon Boettcher, professor of chemistry, studied the catalyst material and also developed a computer model for applying catalyst thin films in solar water-splitting devices as a tool to predict the effectiveness ...

Soybean meal is a bi-product following oil extraction from soybean seeds. It is rich in protein, which usually makes up around 40% of the nutritional components of the seeds and dependent on the line, and can also contain high oleic acid (a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid). The study looked at the role soybeans could have in the prevention of cancer. Using a variety of soybean lines which were high in oleic acid and protein, the researchers looked to monitor bioactivity between the peptides derived from the meals of soybean and various types of human cancer cells. ...

PROBLEMS in accessing donor sperm and eggs at home appear to be behind a reported increase in the number of UK citizens who seek fertility treatment abroad, despite the fact that this is widely seen as risky. Now, a team of academic experts, including a University of Huddersfield professor, have investigated the phenomenon and analysed the attitudes of health professionals. The researchers found little support for legal controls on cross-border fertility treatment, but UK-based clinicians stressed the importance of checking out overseas fertility clinics in order to ...